This Great Work

 Welcome to Taobao Shopping 101.  It will be a crash course.  Time will not allow for the full program.  Here is the opening screen.  What would you like to buy? Here is the syllabus:   1--How to navigate Taobao as a foreigner. 2--Troubleshooting 3--Small print, warnings, caveats, cautions, etc. How:  📸 Shop by picture.  Function like you are in kindergarten because can't read anything and hope nothing too disastrous happens. 🛒 Find something you like, add it to your cart or click instant purchase.   💰Click the purchase icon and authorize the payment.  Easy Peasy.  Be prepared to receive 81 messages per item ordered--just kidding, it's probably only like 7.  You get one every time it changes courier's hands, from both Alipay and Taobao.  Some places send you a separate text message in addition to the ones from Taobao and Alipay and sometimes the courier calls you.  They like to keep you really up to date ...

Clothes shopping here is a completely different experience than where we hail from! There are so many places to shop for clothes:  warehouse shops, small shops on the streets or in malls, or off of TaoBao.  All are vastly different than the US, however the malls come the closest. The first main difference, even in most mall stores: there is only one of each item.  One style.  One size.  So it is like thrift shopping.  They also have small quantities of merchandise; maybe 100-200 items total in a store.  If you like something, but it's the wrong size or a color you don't prefer, you are out of luck. So finding something you like and that fits you is very challenging. Note:  there are MANY items to not like ( think t-shirt problems ) and in most stores t-shirts make up about 25% of their merchandise. Probably 98% of the stores are a conglomerate of styles and clothing types ie. tennis shoes being sold in the same store as formal wear.  So find...

We see lots of interesting things every single day.  Sometimes I get pictures, sometimes I don't.  This is just a landing spot for those things.  First off is a brain dump of 'pictures' in my mind that I don't want to forget.   In the park during morning exercise:   🤨 A man standing with his arms up to the sky groaning/screeching "ahhhhhhh"  at a high decibel for more than 30 seconds and not a soul except us seeming to notice.     😯 A 60+ old lady jumping up and grabbing a branch in a tree, swinging a few swings then falling. Repeat. 😳 A bird swooped down a few feet in front of us, Tom and I ducked (it seemed close to us!), but it hit an approaching man right in the forehead.  If this wasn't odd enough, the man and the three women behind him went on as if this happened every day.   This might not be extraordinarily odd looking, if you knew that many Chinese do not want to have dark skin so they shield with umbrella...